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Reversing Climate Change: What Will It Take?

On the weekend of September 21, 2014, people in 162 countries joined 2,646 events to demand global reductions in the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are generating climate catastrophe. An estimated forty thousand marched in London; thirty thousand in Melbourne; and twenty-five thousand in Paris. Some four hundred thousand joined the People's Climate March through the center of New York City. The climate protection movement had come a long way since 2006, when a march of one thousand through Burlington, Vermont proved to be the largest climate protest in American history. Yet, despite its exponential growth, whether and how the climate protection movement could realize its goals remained an open question.

The Failures of Climate Protection

Climate change poses an existential threat to our species, to every individual, and to all that any of us hold dear. Protecting the earth's climate is in the long-term interest of all humanity. Yet, efforts to cut carbon and other GHGs to a climate-safe level have been defeated for a quarter-century in arenas ranging from the United Nations to the US Congress.

Those failures are not what most climate protection advocates expected. From the scientific confirmation of global warming in the 1980s, they had laboriously built institutions like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and had painstakingly constructed a consensus among scientists,government leaders, and UN officials around the policies defined as necessary by the IPCC. The UN "framework agreement" was followed by the Kyoto Protocol and the Bali Road Map for the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. The world seemed to be proceeding on a rational, if tardy, course to address climate change.

All Nations Must Share Blame or Lose Climate Battle

LONDON—The developing world’s most polluting nations must abandon the decades-old rhetoric that blames rich countries for climate change and share responsibility for reducing emissions to avoid dangerous overheating, according to Brazil’s best-known scientist.

José Goldemberg, who took office as president of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) this month, named Brazil, India and Indonesia—which account for 14% of global emissions—as the three key developing countries that need to abandon an outdated vision of development and use more energy-efficient technologies.

“Without these countries—which were exempt from reducing their emissions by the Kyoto Protocol—making significant efforts, it will be impossible to avoid a global warming of 2°C by 2100, a value that scientists consider as the maximum tolerable to prevent more dramatic climate change than those already taking place,” he said.

5 Things You Need to Know About the U.S.-China Climate Announcements
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced significant climate policy commitments laying a new groundwork for crucial climate talks in Paris this December.

On Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded their bilateral summit with a suite of new climate commitments and a clearer common vision of how to achieve success at the upcoming Paris conference in December.

These announcements build upon the groundbreaking November 2014 U.S.-China joint statement in which the two presidents put forward ambitious national climate targets for their countries. These targets included a U.S. commitment to reduce emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and a Chinese commitment to peak carbon emissions and nearly double the nonfossil portion of its energy mix by 2030. That November 2014 announcement sent a powerful signal to other countries by demonstrating that the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters were taking the steps necessary to help secure a new international climate agreement at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, Conference of the Parties in Paris later this year. The November 2014 announcement encouraged other countries to put their own targets on the table well in advance of the Paris meeting so that the process can move forward on schedule, thus improving the prospects for success.

The new announcements released today demonstrate that the leaders of both nations intend to do what is necessary to reach their national greenhouse gas reduction targets and to resolve key negotiation issues in order to reach a strong new international agreement in Paris. The two presidents are synchronizing U.S. and Chinese policy commitments in some sectors, which will demonstrate that the world’s two largest emitters are moving in tandem. They are also exercising their nations’ resources and international influence to shine a light on the path to success later this year.

There’s a One-in-Four Chance the Fish You Just Ordered Contains Plastic
Researchers find plastic trash in a variety of species tested at California docks and Indonesian fish markets.

Want a side of plastic with your fresh-caught salmon?

About a quarter of fish samples from markets in Indonesia and fresh off the boat in California are filled with plastic and debris such as clothing fibers, scientists at the University of California, Davis, have found.

While other research has found plastics in the bellies of popular dinner-plate items such as tuna and swordfish, this is the first study to link marine plastic ingestion directly to fish sold for human consumption.

“We knew fish ingest plastic, but we wanted to see if it was getting to consumers’ plates,” said Susan Williams, an ecology professor at UC Davis and a coauthor of the study.

Obama Says Paris Climate Talks Bound to ‘Fall Short’

President Barack Obama said he hopes major countries agree to "aggressive enough targets" to cut carbon emissions at climate talks in Paris later this year, but he said any deal will fall short of what is needed to slow global warming.

"I'm less concerned about the precise number, because let's stipulate right now, whatever various country targets are, it's still going to fall short of what the science requires," Obama said in an interview published in Rolling Stone magazine.

Scientists say global warming needs to be limited to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to avoid devastating droughts and rising sea levels.

Countries are submitting pledges to cut emissions ahead of the U.N. summit. So far, those pledges are estimated to limit warming to 3 degrees Celsius.